


this is my kingdom come

by haipollai



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Getting back the past, M/M, Multi, Past Relationship(s), winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 18:19:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/pseuds/haipollai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Everyone has stories to tell, Steve learned that as a little boy. Sarah taught him that. Everyone has lived through hard times. The good ones are the ones who made the best of it and Steve needs to be good, he needs to help others be good. Steve isn't sure how good he is at talking (the other boys never really want to listen to him) but he can listen.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He hopes it's enough.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>(The Avengers figure this out quickly. When Steve Rogers is drawing, he'll let you get whatever you want off your chest.)</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is my kingdom come

Everyone has stories to tell, Steve learned that as a little boy. Sarah taught him that. Everyone has lived through hard times. The good ones are the ones who made the best of it and Steve needs to be good, he needs to help others be good. Steve isn't sure how good he is at talking (the other boys never really want to listen to him) but he can listen.

He hopes it's enough.

(The Avengers figure this out quickly. When Steve Rogers is drawing, he'll let you get whatever you want off your chest.)

He draws only to keep his hands busy so does not mind much.

(Steve has learned too many secrets in his life this way.)

Natasha tells him about a man she knew. In another life. A man who wasn't quite human. She tells him how this man was made to fight for his country, shaped and molded.

But good intentions, and what is nobler then deeds down for ones country?

Steve does not know where this story is going but sometimes even Natasha simply needs to share, so he stays quiet and listens. She tells him how this man, her man, talked in his sleep. She tells him about a man created to be a soldier, whose emotions had been stamped out whispered about another life.

She looks at him him and tells Steve he whispered Steve's name once.

He tells her there are lots of Steves.

She says not so many Steve Rogers.

(She calls her man Yasha and says while he was made to fight for Russia, he was never Russian.)

Steve stares out over a city, blank and cold and tells himself there's a million Steve Rogers out there.

Tony has the old movies stashed away, remnants from his father. Steve sets them up, not sure why. He doesn't long for the past. He does not miss the USO tours, being the senator's puppet. Tony lets him dig through the box on his own. Doesn't seem to care much for his contents.

(Steve knows that Tony found the secret to saving his life in one of these boxes and wonders what makes a man so uncaring.)

The reels even have the news stories attached and he listens to an announcer talking about troops, Americans off fighting the good fight. He watches trains take soldiers one way in England and children another way. He remembers burning studio lights and dirty, cold trenches.

Steve doesn't finish the reel.

There are pictures in the boxes, stored carelessly. Newspaper clippings, an old comic. From it falls a card with his face on it. It's probably worth real money. Steve crumbles it in a fist.

There is nothing in the boxes he does not already know. He closes them up and lets them be shut away.

They are not his belongings. They are the collections of another man, desperate for some saving grace. Trying to find it in his most successful experiment. (Howard was not searching for a friend under the ocean, he was searching for a serum.)

Steve finds Natasha in the gym. They don't say anything, they've both had their fill of stories. With the smooth flow of fists and kicks they come up with new stories, new ways of listening.

There is only one piece of the past that Steve wants back. One piece of unfinished business. (A boy made a man in blood and dirt who Steve lost too early.)

Steve wonders if Natasha feels the same way about her Yasha. He never asks, they are past talking. Words would slow them down and there are other ways of listening. She laughs in bed and for some reason Steve isn't surprised. It's not an expression of amusement, it's relief, and excitement and joy. Steve takes his time, hands and lips and tongue gliding over her skin, just so he can hear it again.

He doesn't know if there is a word for what they do, for sleeping together, for laughing and living and fighting. Sometimes side by side, sometimes with each other. He knew love once long ago but this tugs on other strings. In the end he decides not to compare. 

(There is no basis for comparison between a woman who burns and a man who protects.)

He takes her dancing simply to watch her move.

It is summer, she wears a simple dress (Steve has no doubt she is armed) and they find a place, away from the Tower, from the scars of old battles. There is a small outdoor dance area and he spins her to big band jazz. He wonders what she listened to as a child, if it was America imports, did Frank Sinatra make it past the sickle and hammer or maybe singers with names he could never pronounce.

It is summer and the air is warm and heavy.

They are not prepared for the winter. For a man with a metal arm and a target on Steve's back.

He is blood, and death, heavy as the air. One shot to take them both down but giants fall hard, not easily and in the end two versus one is no battle at all.

The man with one metal arm is brought in, dumped in a cell. Treated like a hostile.

(Steve remembers a story of a man turned into a machine whispering his name.)

It is not easy to turn a machine into a man, Steve wonders if it will be too much, if the cure is worse then the disease. He asks Natasha what they should call him. She says he is her Yasha and Steve says he is Bucky. They do not walk in hand in hand but they approach him side by side.

And there in a cold cell, Steve tells a story about a woman who raised him to be good. To help others be the same.

It's harder then Steve thought, using words. He wishes he could retreat, go back to a place where all he had to do was listen. Let others pour out their hearts. But the Winter Soldier has no stories. His memories are notches on his gun. (Or perhaps scars on his skin, the only record the Russians couldn't erase.)

It is up to Steve and Natasha to fill in the blanks, to remind cold flesh what it means to be human. To make the machine a man again. The man who has always existed underneath metal and blood.

By the time he is allowed out, it is winter and the air brings with it sharp chills. None of them shiver but they all feel the cold cut through them. Outside of SHIELD, Bucky throws his head back and laughs. It echoes in the cold air, rushes in and fills the empty spaces with life.

(It fills the missing spaces inside Steve and Natasha.)

It is a conversation they have never explicitly had, but when her eyes meet his, Steve knows they don't have to. Bucky tastes like warm metal and Natasha's lipstick.

Natasha calls him Yasha and Steve calls him Bucky and they keep him between them as they finally guide him home. An arm through an arm through an arm. A living puzzle. Maybe one day they'll change their shapes, but for now they fit.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Demons by Imagine Dragons.  
> Originally posted over on Tumblr, it's been cleaned up and expanded and hopefully made better.


End file.
